Slashdot Mirror
China's All-Seeing Eye
krou writes "Naomi Klein writes in Rolling Stone Magazine about China's Panopticon-like experiment called 'Golden Shield' taking place in Shenzhen using technology supplied by companies such as IBM, Honeywell, and General Electric. Klein writes: 'Chinese citizens will be watched around the clock through networked CCTV cameras and remote monitoring of computers. They will be listened to on their phone calls, monitored by digital voice-recognition technologies. Their Internet access will be aggressively limited through the country's notorious system of online controls known as the "Great Firewall." Their movements will be tracked through national ID cards with scannable computer chips and photos that are instantly uploaded to police databases and linked to their holder's personal data.' According to Klein, this is more than just a Chinese experiment, it's also one that holds ramifications for America and elsewhere: '...the most efficient delivery system for capitalism is actually a communist-style police state... The global corporations currently earning superprofits from this social experiment are unlikely to be content if the lucrative new market remains confined to cities such as Shenzhen. Like everything else assembled in China with American parts, Police State 2.0 is ready for export to a neighborhood near you.'"
"And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed--if all records told the same tale--then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'"
It's nothing to do with them being Communists. Actually, if they were to do something with Communist motivation, it would be feeding the poor. This is more about stamping out sedition. Something any government could do, completely separate from their political style.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
With due respect, this article isn't about a totalitarian state that watches it's citizens; it's about the fact that US companies are the one's who are making it possible.
"I think it would be a good idea" Gandhi, on Western Civilisation
"Be your own news source, instead of settling for second-hand sensationalism."
So you are suggesting that once we succeed at being our own news source we keep that info to ourselves? If I chose Rolling Stone to disseminate the information I gathered firsthand it would immediately be devalued?
The RS article is old news, all of which I have seen reported elsewhere in recent weeks, but I fail to see how it is counterproductive to publicize the evolution of surveillance states.
On a side note, Rolling Stone being a glossy mag came about as a nod to the power of photojournalism in popular culture. There are anthologies published of RS photos and they hold significant historical and artistic value. As a disclaimer, I haven't been interested enough in pop culture to actually pick up an issue in years, but that doesn't mean the value isn't still there for others.
I am a bit dumbfounded by your approach to reading article. You need trust to read something ? What happened to critical anaylsis. I think most "reasonable" people will read an article and analysis the content of the article rather than taking the content on blind faith. You've basically judged an article simply by the publisher without even considering any of the issues brought up from the article. It seems the question isn't whether you should trust it or not, its whether you can make an informed judgment, and it doesn't seem you can.
And it's not Capitalist, it's a wonderful halfway point called fascist.
From TFA: "Remember how we've always been told that free markets and free people go hand in hand? That was a lie. It turns out that the most efficient delivery system for capitalism is actually a communist-style police state"
Free markets require the freedom to chose without coercion in order to be efficient for everyone involved. China does not have a free market. The transactions are not efficient for the low man on the totem pole, namely the worker. China is fascist, and the country is a giant form of monopoly that has huge profit margins by manipulating the labor supply and the rights afforded to individuals to drive down costs. Just because China is having huge profits does not mean they are more efficient.
A lot of people will go on about the horrible violation to civil liberties all of these things China does are, but no one ever talks about the horrible damage these things do to the economic well being of the country.
China IS going to undergo serious reform or revolution. It won't be possible to maintain any level of efficiency without the proper rule of law or a Meritocracy. China WILL become more efficient once more people start demanding a larger share, and the only way they can do this is through greater representation and markets, markets that need informed consumers who are not being forced to act against their best interests.
All successful revolutions have come from the middle to upper class capitalists who are feed up with kings and lords ruling by mandate cutting into their bottom line. China is no different.
From TFA "With political unrest on the rise across China, the government hopes to use the surveillance shield to identify and counteract dissent before it explodes into a mass movement"
If someone is dissenting that means there is something that needs to be changed. That is the best example of why china, like the USSR, will hit a standard of living wall. Efficiency requires freedom.
"that modern China represents a form of authoritarian capitalism whose efficiency is quite remarkable"
I think its open to debate if China is remarkable for its "efficiency". It mostly just has lots of cheap labor, no labor unions and very weak pollution and safety regulation which means its a cheap place to do things like manufacturing. There are quite a few things working against its economic efficiency.
A. The party officials that run the place are extremely corrupt. Corruption is good for business only if it swings your way. If it swings against you, or for your competition it is quite bad for business, and the unpredictability of corruption is especially bad for business.
B. The legal frameworks in the country are extremely poor. This is a plus if you ware a bootlegger ripping off your competition's product, its not so good if your IP and products are the ones being ripped off.
C. Not sure exactly why but China did apparently pass new labor laws around the first of the year and they undid some of the slave labor aspects of being a worker in China. Workers did actually get some rights under the new laws and it appears they are going to cause a significant spike in the cost of labor, along with the simple fact labor isn't as abundant in China as it once was. This along with a number of other factors is causing wage inflation and making China less and less attractive to Capitalism. The factors that made China boom can also work against it and lead to a bust and for the boom to move elsewhere.
D. China's one child policy is starting to cause a severe shortage of young workers since it began in 1979. Their population is going to start become senior citizen heavy like Japan and the U.S. which has a lot of negative economic consequences. Most older workers can't stand the dormitories and 6-7 day work weeks in China's factories so as the young labor pool drops its going to hammer their sweat shop manufacturing industries.
E. Censorship might have its positives in that it helps eliminate dissent but it also means you can do some incredibly stupid stuff and get away with it because you can suppress knowledge of your stupidity. A free press and a free Internet can server a useful purpose in that it can eventually expose corruption, incompetence and stupidity and led to corrective action if the press and freedom of speech works. For example in the U.S. the free press went dysfunctional after 9/11 and untold stupidity was perpetrated by the Bush administration like the war in Iraq, torture and domestic spying. The press still isn't very healthy but America has started to throw the Republican's out of power for their incompetence, though the Democrats are much of an improvement. In China is if the ruling party turns bad, there are no alternatives except for changing one set of Communist party leaders for another in an internal power struggle.
F. The spiking cost of oil is suddenly starting to work against globalization. Not sure how accurate it is but someone on CNBC said the cost to ship a container from China to the U.S. has quadrupled recently from $2K to $8K and if oil prices continue to spike its going to be less and less attractive to ship goods half way around the world. Its already working against heavy goods with a low labor component like steel. The more expensive fuel gets the less likely you are going to offshore manufacturing for the U.S. and Europe to China. Mexico may become increasingly attractive again for the U.S. labor pool.
@de_machina
Yes, why develop critical reading skills when you can rather lay your trust in known authority. If a source is good, the information will be good, if a source is bad, the information will be wrong. I know this because everything I read confirms my worldview.
From a purely economic point of view, the borders between fascism (of which national socialism is a variant, mixed in with some chauvinism) and capitalism are blurry. Or rather, capitalism as we know it.
In a fascist economy, everything is secondary to industrial growth. It's an "ask what you can do for your country" world. You better not ask what your country can do for you, since you don't count. The strength of your country and its economy does. This goes hand in hand with laws that prefer the interests of industry and commerce, while ignoring the needs of the people.
Bluntly, this is closer to what China is like today than any socialist or communist model. And thinking about it, we're moving there, too.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yes, but what you're doing to the article here is called ad hominem, and it's a fallacy. If you want to ignore it on account of the publisher, feel free to do so -- but if you're going to speak regarding the article's merits, it behooves you to read it first.
It's a heckuvalot more informative than your post, and raises legitimate issues (ie. mechanisms in use to circumvent laws specifically forbidding export of law enforcement equipment to China) even should you choose to ignore the editorializing.